SERVICE BEST PRACTICES

This tool is intended to help you prepare your chapter for a meaningful TG Day of Service. Please use it to guide the conversation with your brothers and your chapter’s interactions with the community you serve.

Before

Research the service organization.

• What community are they located in?

• What does the organization focus on?

During

Remember...

• …that you are a guest in someone else’s space.

• [The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from goodwill and an acute sense of propriety]

• …that the community members are experts on their own lives.

• [Who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity]

• …that you are not a savior coming in to help.

• [who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own]; maybe [and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.]

• …to keep an open mind.

• [who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another]

Ask questions. Ask yourself.

• Is your experience different than expected? Does anything you hear, feel, or smell surprise you?

• What did the body language of the community members tell you?

• What would a typical day be like for the community members who use the services at the organization? If you were one of them, what would you think of you coming in and serving?

• If you were one of the community members, what would your self-concept be like?

• What would you change about this agency if you were in charge?

• How can you put their rights and feelings above your own?

• How can you be sincere in this environment?

• How can you connect genuinely with the community members without making them more conscious of their situation?

• What did you do?

• How do you feel after the experience?

• Did you personally interact with any community members? How was that?

• How are you different now compared to before the service? Have any values, beliefs, or opinions changed? If so, what and why? Do you have a different picture of the community than you had before?

• What impacted the way you saw this experience? What lens were you viewing from?

• If the community members seem different from you, how? If you have any particular stereotypes about the population you worked with, have these stereotypes changed during your service? In what ways?

• What are some of the pressing needs/issues in the community? What do you think are the root causes of these issues? Does this service address those needs? How, specifically, has the community benefited?

• What other work is happening to address this issue? What should others do about this issue?

• Where do we go from here? How can you collaborate with others? What’s the next step?

• How does this service align with being a True Gentleman?